Back in the winter of 1995, Bill Kristol liked to fantasize aloud about "President Newt Gingrich." Once, after the House speaker addressed a group of Republican governors, Kristol gushed to The Washington Times, "How can anyone hear the speech he gave today and not want to see him run?" For Kristol, who was editing the newly launched Weekly Standard, Gingrich--energetic and idealistic, smart and strident--embodied all that was good about modern conservatism. By the fall of 1997, however, disillusionment had set in. Kristol's litany of gripes with Gingrich seemed unending: His foreign policy was flaccid and corporate; he prosecuted the culture war without vigor; his hostility to government bled into anti-Americanism. Along with his Standard colleague David Brooks, Kristol set out to knock the intellectual underpinnings from beneath Gingrichism. "Wishing to be left alone isn't a governing doctrine," they wrote on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. "And an American political movement's highest goal can't be protecting citizens from their own government."

A manifesto accompanied their critique. In place of the GOP's libertarianism, they proposed "national-greatness conservatism." They spoke of returning the Republican Party to the activist ways of Theodore Roosevelt, even borrowing his rhetoric. "[B]ust the great public trusts of our time--the education, health and Social Security monopolies," they shouted. But while the rhetoric was new, the substance wasn't. Yes, Kristol and Brooks wanted an activist federal government, but only so it could dismantle itself, which was exactly what libertarians had been demanding all along.

But Kristol and Brooks have come a long way in the past three years. These days they champion campaign finance reform and environmental protection. They oppose the Bush administration's proposed repeal of the estate tax because, as Brooks puts it, "We should be concerned with the widening income gap." They attack corporate power with Naderesque ferocity. No one can accuse them of being mere libertarians in Bull Moose garb anymore. National-greatness conservatism, to the surprise of many, has come to mean something. It's a real ideology now. It's just not a conservative one.

In the universe of Newt Gingrich, a special place was reserved for the intellectual guru. And, for a time in the early '90s, the man who occupied it was Bill Kristol. From his personal think tank, the Project for the Republican Future, Kristol whispered in the ear of the aspiring House speaker. Stumping for the Contract With America, Gingrich came to parrot Kristol's lines about the hollowness of the liberal welfare state. And one of Kristol's many memos formed the basis of Gingrich's strategy of "principled obstructionism" against Hillarycare.

As long as Gingrich played the part of anti-establishment insurgent, Kristol venerated him. In 1995, the debut cover of Kristol's Standard portrayed Gingrich as Rambo, bravely swinging on a vine above a burning Capitol. But once Gingrich was entrenched as speaker, Kristol began to express reservations. "Gingrich seems determined to move at a snail's pace," Kristol editorialized in a fit of frustration. On affirmative action and vouchers, Gingrich was insufficiently vocal; on defense spending, he asked for barely a pittance. Most disappointingly, Gingrich had begun extolling the virtues of engagement with China. "[T]he Republican establishment has joined the Clinton administration in subordinating both strategic concerns and American principles to business interests," Kristol lamented in early 1997. Nor was China an isolated case. Where Kristol and his neocon comrades called for aggressive, moralistic interventions around the world, Gingrich and his congressional cronies treated foreign policy as an extension of their libertarianism: Here, too, they let U.S. business set policy. The scuffle over China sowed the seeds of Kristol's growing suspicion of corporate influence over the Republican Party and of the libertarian ideology that rationalized it. Marshall Wittmann, a key Kristol ally now at the Hudson Institute, explains: "When Republicans took control of Congress and pursued a foreign policy more interested in promoting the dollar than democracy, we became concerned about the corporate corruption of the movement." And the movement became concerned about them. In April 1997 Gingrich phoned Rush Limbaugh's radio show and lambasted his old friend: "I've concluded that [Kristol] thinks he has to make news by pandering to the liberals every week and has become sort of the most destructive element on the right."

Alienated from the GOP leadership--and convinced by the 1996 elections that its libertarian politics couldn't win--Kristol and Brooks unveiled national-greatness conservatism. There was only one problem: No one, perhaps not even Kristol and Brooks, had a clear idea of what the phrase meant. In the Standard, Kristol urged Gingrich to be more stridently conservative. In their manifesto, they urged Republicans to jettison their strident anti-government rhetoric. The incoherence was painfully evident. When Brooks and Kristol tried to devise policies for their brand of activist governance, they either ended up reciting conservative boilerplate about privatizing Social Security and education or suggested quirky, symbolic causes like revamping the space program and building ornate public libraries.

National-greatness conservatism probably wouldn't have amounted to much more than that, had it not been for the presidential candidacy of John McCain. When Wittmann first supplied the straight-talking senator with Brooks's essays on the topic in the spring of 1998, McCain's campaign was in desperate need of a rationale. It had a candidate with a compelling biography but no clear agenda. So McCain took the themes of national-greatness conservatism--Teddy Roosevelt-style reform, nationalist revivalism--and made them his own. Even his campaign slogan, "the new patriotic challenge," was an explicit nod in Kristol and Brooks's direction. As McCain aide John Weaver acknowledges, Wittmann and Kristol were "the home breeding ground for the legislative and strategic concepts that ultimately emanate from McCain."

It's easy to understand why McCain's fledgling campaign bought into the national-greatness conservatism concept--he needed ideas that would separate him from the Republican pack. Why Kristol and Brooks chose the Arizona senator as their vehicle is more complicated. After all, George W. Bush's speeches also borrowed unabashedly from their criticisms of "leave us alone" conservatism. W.'s foreign policy slogan, "a distinctly American internationalism," repudiated the isolationism of the House Republicans. And one would have expected McCain's casual indifference on abortion and homosexuality to infuriate genuine social conservatives such as Kristol and Wittmann.

There was, however, a significant obstacle to a Bush-Kristol alliance. The political tradition from which Kristol and Brooks hailed was neoconservatism, a movement with urban, Jewish, Northeastern, highbrow roots. The Texas governor, with his Southern pedigree, evangelical flourishes, and anti-intellectual tendencies, represented something very different. As Brooks puts it: "We're separated from him by culture."

Under Ronald Reagan and Gingrich, those differences had been papered over. The neocons had praised evangelicals for remoralizing American life, even overlooking the occasional anti-Semitic slur from their friends. (After Pat Robertson published his ravings in 1991 about the "cosmopolitan, liberal, secular Jews" who "undermine the public strength of Christianity," for example, the Podhoretzes and Kristols sprang to his defense.) But by the 2000 campaign, many of the Jewish neocons had decisively fallen out with the Christian theocons. The breaking point came in 1996 with a symposium, sponsored by the journal First Things, titled "End of Democracy?" and featuring such social conservative stars as Charles Colson, Robert Bork, and Robert P. George. Unable to make headway against legalized abortion, the religious intellectuals lashed out in frustration. The government's immorality, they warned, justified civil disobedience and even revolution. This rhetoric transgressed too many of the neocons' first principles--patriotism, the rule of law, and the basic religious pluralism of the American state. Neocons accused the religious conservatives of anti-Americanism and broke ranks.

So, even though Kristol remained committed to banning abortion, he jumped on the McCain campaign as an opportunity to purge, in his and Brooks's words, the "self-caricaturing leaders of the right." It was more than just an occasion to toss the yokels overboard; McCain presented the neocons with an opportunity to shape the conservative movement in the fashion their intellectual forefather Leo Strauss had imagined. Gone would be Robertson's sectarian Christian politics. In its place, McCain would install Strauss's preferred antidote to relativism--the secular religion of the state. In March 2000, soon after McCain called Robertson and Jerry Falwell "forces of evil," Brooks and Kristol wrote that "McCain would redirect a religiously based moral conservatism into a patriotically grounded moral appeal. When McCain talks about remoralizing America, he talks in terms of reinvigorating patriotism."

As important as Kristol's cultural affinity for McCain was his temperamental affinity for the senator's rebellious style. Kristol, too, had made a career of shaking his fist at the GOP establishment. In the early '90s he had backed Spencer Abraham's renegade campaign to become chairman of the Republican National Committee. In 1993 he started the Project for the Republican Future with the purpose of goading the party leadership rightward. In 1996, even after Bob Dole's nomination seemed inevitable, Kristol continued to flirt with every other imaginable Republican candidate. He laid bare his guiding philosophy in the Standard in 1997: "What's needed is an insurrection--one, two, many insurrections--from within the ranks of the GOP."

Signing up for McCain's insurrection, however, had unanticipated ideological side effects. From the start, Kristol and Brooks realized they would have to embrace campaign finance reform--despite the fact that a 1999 Standard editorial had pronounced the House's version of the McCainFeingold legislation "a piece of shameless zealotry." But they could hardly have guessed how far left McCain would drift. In the heat of an insurgency, his hostility to the GOP establishment steadily deepening, McCain began jettisoning the conservative movement's core economic agenda. After a career of supporting tax cuts, McCain attacked the Bush economic plan's bias toward the wealthy. Although he had routinely voted down HMO reform, he became a proponent of the patients' bill of rights. Over and over, he slammed Bush for failing to set aside money for Social Security.

But the Kristolites didn't distance themselves from McCain's transgressions. Indeed, the Bush campaign's bare-knuckle response to McCain's challenge only bonded his supporters more strongly to his renegade campaign. In the primaries, conservatives whispered that the Bushies were enlisting the Standard's advertisers to apply pressure to Kristol and Brooks. Kristol says he never experienced any strong-arming. But the rumors grew so intense that, according to one eyewitness, McCain confronted Standard owner Rupert Murdoch at a Los Angeles fund-raiser and pressed him to guarantee the health of the magazine. For Wittmann, who'd become a McCain supporter in 1998, the threats were more than rumors. After years of loyal service to the conservative cause as a lobbyist for the Christian Coalition and the Heritage Foundation, Wittmann's support for McCain transformed him into a pariah. His colleagues at Heritage warned him that his support for McCain would jeopardize his career. His superiors forbade him to identify himself as a Heritage employee in conversations with reporters. Life at Heritage became so uncomfortable that Wittmann left.

Nor did the recriminations end when the campaign did. Since the election, Kristol has been publicly badmouthed by everyone from Paul Weyrich to Dick Cheney. Tim Goeglein, one of Bush adviser Karl Rove's hirelings, has complained to Wittmann's new patrons at the Hudson Institute about his criticism of the administration. Ultra-activist Grover Norquist has been even blunter, telling one of his fellow conservatives that Wittmann was no longer welcome in the movement. And as far as Kristol is concerned, the feeling is mutual. "Why are conservatives so upset? It isn't that we supported McCain; it's that we haven't apologized for supporting him," he told me. "There's something sick about a movement like that."

Kristol, Brooks, and Wittmann, having joined the McCain crusade as nettlesome members of the conservative movement, ended it cast out of the movement altogether. And ideology has followed sociology--with the national-greatness conservatives willing to entertain ever more radical heresies against conservative orthodoxy. As followers of Strauss, neocons had always held that public virtue--not economic efficiency or individual freedom--was the measure of a good society. Their journals, Public Interest and Commentary, never objected to the welfare state per se--only the efficacy of specific policies. During the cold war, neocons joined the anti-government crusade because it gave them allies against communism abroad and against relativism at home. But, with their bonds to the conservative movement loosened, Kristol and his allies have begun to drop the strategic anti-statism of their neocon ancestors and are beginning to develop an economics that doesn't worship at the altar of unregulated free markets.

It's not just the accusation, hurled in Standard editorials, that Bush was "groveling" to China on behalf of American business. As Wittmann has written on his website, conservativereform.org, "[C]onservatism need not be defined by K Street. As we pursue tax cuts, it seems reasonable to focus on middle-class relief such as cutting the payroll tax." Says Kristol, "I don't have any problems with the safety net." Which raises a question. If national-greatness conservatism scorns the Christian right, jettisons the struggle to shrink government, and champions an idealistic foreign policy more likely to be supported by The New York Times than Dick Armey, in what meaningful, contemporary sense is it conservatism at all?

If you haven't seen much of this heresy in the pages of The Weekly Standard, that's because on domestic policy Kristol and Brooks have become a minority in their own office. Unable to turn the Standard into a vehicle for their movement, they've essentially stopped writing about economics and social policy. Ironically, as its top editors have inaugurated one of the most interesting Beltway debates in years, the magazine has grown less interesting. Instead, Kristol and Wittmann have started a think tank called the Project for Conservative Reform, run out of the Hudson Institute, with the sole purpose of developing position papers for their movement. And Brooks's next book will aim to infuse national-greatness conservatism with some needed marrow.

But will their ideas have consequences? In Brooks's view, the national-greatness conservatives should become a Republican version of the New Democrats--a movement to reform the party from within. But New Democrats took over the party in the early '90s, after it had lost dismally for more than a decade. The GOP, by contrast, controls the presidency, both houses of Congress, and most of the nation's governors' mansions; most Republicans don't see the need to blow it up and start again. That's why Wittmann is considering a more radical route: the creation of an entirely new political party. "The Bull Moose Party and the 1912 election are the only models I have to work with," he says. McCain, of course, would be the latter-day Teddy Roosevelt. And although the Arizona senator has publicly said he won't challenge Bush, his aides insist he has left himself some wiggle room. ("If Bush vetoes campaign finance reform, all bets are off," says one loyal McCainiac.)

But if Wittmann and Co. hope to create a new Bull Moose Party, they might take a look at what the first one produced: a two-term Democratic president. Instead of forcing the Republicans in a progressive direction, the conflict turned reform-minded voters (the precursors to the independents who backed McCain last spring) into Democrats and drove the Republican faithful into the arms of reactionaries like Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. The national-greatness conservatives understand that risk, which may be why they call their strategy "creative destruction." But today, at least, the second half of that slogan seems more likely than the first.

Last night, a thread was started (which I can no longer locate) on the topic of, generally, how did we get to the current state of affairs where America has become the least respected, most feared nation in the world.

As I recall, some posters were quite upset that we are no longer the beacon of freedom and example for other countries to follow but rather thought of as a bully to the rest of the world. Others took exception to the word bully and accused the original poster of being a member of the Hate America First Crowd, etc. They insisted they were the genuine conservatives, since they were preserving America from the terrorists while the anti-war faction was inviting our destruction.

Without getting into the pros and cons of first strike, pre-emptive attack and advanced concepts such as MAD, I believe it is necessary that we FReepers understand which way the conservative movement has drifted since the end of the Cold War.

As a start, I am posting this article, originally published in that formerly left-wing but now respectable journal of opinion, The New Republic, over a year ago. It provides some background on the evolution of neo-conservativism from a pseudo-libertarian, don't-trust-the-government movement of former socialists and New Dealers to the "national greatness" conservatism as practiced openly by McCain and Kristol and, without a doubt, in the closet by any number of others, both in and out of the Bush Administration.

I would welcome any comments, as well as links to articles on Free Republic that supplement what Mr. Foer writes.

And please, for the sake of discussion and faster loading of the page for people using a dial-up account, refrain from inserting huge graphics that only clutter the screen and detract from the subject at hand. We are all perfectly aware of what happened on September 11, 2001.

Can that be due to its relative meaninglessness since Reagan left office?

I use that as a proximate benchmark, because it was around then that the remaining conservatives in Washington pretty much threw in the towel. They had lost any sense of power with passage of the 1986 tax bill.

Kristol is a mess. Like many conservatives of my generation -- who got involved because "Conservativism", as then defined, was the most radical, anti-establishment political form then available -- he's never been able to transition to a role in a majority, ready-to-govern coalition. He seeks the fight, but has no stomache to actually build, or create, anything. So sad.

And what's wrong with "leave me alone" conservativism? It still holds an appeal for me; as it would the Founding Fathers.

I think the biggest confusion began actually with the election of Reagan. You had these moralists, who switched over from the democratic party on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. It had nothing to do with their views on labor unions, the minimum wage, corporate welfare, etc...

Gary Bauer is a good example. He is to the left of Bill Clinton economically, but a devout moralist christian, so he is called a conservative. Is he?

I think the words get confused. Conservatism means just as it says, to conserve, to preserve the moral order. But in a time when the order is chaos, the meaning of conservative is thrown into the abyss as well.

I would argue that Gingrich is more of a reactionary than a conservative. Reagan was trying to reinstill old values, so he was conservative, Gingrich was interested in new ideas, etc...

Is Free trade or protectionism conservative? Are the steel tarriff's Bush adopted conservative? Is the federal war on drugs conservative? It all depends on your definition.

that we FReepers understand which way the conservative movement has drifted since the end of the Cold War.

I am at a loss to understand how the conservative "movement" has drifted. The term neo-con is a misnomer but it will suffice for the subject of this article. The article itself is somewhat incoherent but the final message appears to be that the neo-cons have lost influence within the "movement" rather that steering its course.

I think it's hard to keep the meaning of the word because it's not an ideology, as Kirk says, and the meaning can evolve. It's somewhat elusive. But I don't think it should be splintered into factions, which is what has happened.

Few people understand that conservatism doesn't mean standing still, for example. It doesn't mean wearing a three-piece suit and slipping pocketwatch in your vest.

This is a massive topic, actually. Interestingly, and not ironically (another severly misused word), I had searched amazon.com a while ago for conservative books and this one popped up: "Bob Cobb's Dittohead Bartender's Guide."

And what's wrong with "leave me alone" conservativism? It still holds an appeal for me; as it would the Founding Fathers.

Well said, and I agree.

This was pretty much the standard form between 1964 and sometime in the '80s. (I'm still not sure where we went adrift, either with Reagan's second term or Bush the Elder's term. The end of the Cold War cinched it for many, as they learned that the "peace dividend" would be paid in social programs.)

I am probably not going to be your favoroite reply, but I am quite grateful you posted this.

If you read through this article, you get a picture of Bill Kristol's behavior through the last few years, and it is obvious that as I have often pointed out, he chooses positions and personalities which are detrimental to the Republican party. He isn't a conservative at all.

He is a mole.

This article fails to document his long campaign to get Colin Powell to run as the Republican nominee in 2000. This is the same Colin Powell which Kristol now routinely trashes.

Kristol was originally backing Powell because he knew it would cause a split in the Republicans. Now he trashes Powell as Secretary of State, for the same reason.

So, thanks for posting this article, as it documents other incidences of the same type of behavior.

I use that as a proximate benchmark, because it was around then that the remaining conservatives in Washington pretty much threw in the towel. They had lost any sense of power with passage of the 1986 tax bill.

There came a realization that the 'New Deal" programs were so entrenched that it was a losing battle. Reagan tried to starve them to death with tax reductions but also had to make large concessions for the same strategy of spending the Soviets into bankruptcy on defense buildups.

If you don't examine that cloud, you can't see the sky itself. If you start your examination of conservatism with the side-track of the son of a interesting conservative, a son who is less than a leading light, I think you are in a dark cave.

Last night, a thread was started (which I can no longer locate) on the topic of, generally, how did we get to the current state of affairs where America has become the least respected, most feared nation in the world.

As I recall, some posters were quite upset that we are no longer the beacon of freedom and example for other countries to follow but rather thought of as a bully to the rest of the world. Others took exception to the word bully and accused the original poster of being a member of the Hate America First Crowd, etc. They insisted they were the genuine conservatives, since they were preserving America from the terrorists while the anti-war faction was inviting our destruction.

Without getting into the pros and cons of first strike, pre-emptive attack and advanced concepts such as MAD, I believe it is necessary that we FReepers understand which way the conservative movement has drifted since the end of the Cold War.

Neo-conservatism is clique politics. So is paleo-conservatism. So are New Democrats and neo-liberals and paleo-liberals. All journalistic and academic politics are the politics of cliques and coteries. It involves getting oneself published, getting the ear of politicians, shaping public opinion, and getting jobs for one's self and one's colleagues and cronies. This sort of politics is different from that of ordinary people who have little personally to gain from politics and make their choices on more general and impersonal grounds. It is inevitable that if you think yourself a prospective officeholder or an advisor to the powerful, you will take a different view of things than those who simply want to be left alone, or to express opinions.

There is an interesting discussion of neo-conservatism and paleo-conservatism at the weblog of Harvard Law School's Federalist Society (if you can get beyond the fact that it combines three great banes of society: Harvard, lawyers, and student politicians). Interesting quote there:

"I have been, and am still, a traditional conservative, focusing on three general freedoms- economic, social, and political ... Russel Kirk's The Conservative Mind, published [in 1953] was also important to me. Kirk gave the conservative viewpoint an intellectual foundation and respectability it had not attained in modern society ... [Kirk] declared that religion, family, and private property and its yield, as well as law and order, were the foundations of a conservative society ... 'My kind of Republican Party is committed to a free state, limited central power, a reduction in bureaucracy, and a balanced budget'" Goldwater, pp. 109-112. I think this summarizes mainstream conservatism as well as any other statement and I don't understand everyone's fascination with a war on the fringes.

That pretty much does sum up the common understanding of conservatism. The neos are too quick to increase the power of the federal government, when we ought to be trying to reduce it. I don't think we can or should repeal everything done since 1964 or 1932 or 1913 or 1860 or 1787. Practicality and responsibility dictate that some federal agencies will remain. Anarchy is not a conservative goal, and conservatives will have to make peace with some forms of federal regulation and oversight. But that doesn't mean being enthusiastic over increaching the scope and reach of government power.

The article is fascinating, but I don't trust the New Republic very much about conservatives. What's significant is that all this has been obscured by the shift of debate to foreign and military affairs. When the dust clears, we may well find Kristol's neo-conservatism enthrowned as the new conservative orthodoxy, or we may find a bitter battle over domestic policy and the size and role of the state.

Like the gingham dog and the calico cat, neos and paleos, lovers of TR and FDR on one side and haters of Lincoln and Hamilton on the other may end up devouring each other, leaving the way open for political leaders who directly address the voter, rather than courtiers who seek to become power brokers. Goldwater and Reagan, do seem to be a good guide. Though they were most critical of the general trend of government intervention since FDR, I don't think they opposed environmental protection or the regulation of banks and financial markets.

Kristol's main flaw, although not exactly unique is his own inflated view of himself. He frequently eschews pragmatism with his fellow conservatives..(broadly speaking). No wonder he loved McCain..lol...

I know Marty sold TNR...right?....but I'm not sure it's now become "conservative" yet. Are the new owners both neo-cons as well? They appear to fit the Jewish neocon label....name-wise, which btw, sort of bugs me. I would not lump all Jewish conservatives into the neocon soup because of support for Israel. Many hard right culture warriors like myself feel the same way....and frankly G-d has nothing to do with it from my perspective.

There was a day 20 odd years ago when TNR boasted Fred Barnes, Krauthammer (I know...another Neo), and PJ O'Rourke.

Uh, don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. While getting rid of social security sounds nice to some people, ain't never gonna happen, and people that spend all day wishing it were so should find something better to do.

Kristol is an infinite bore. Once I spent a week listening to him give a one hour speech. He went on and on and on and on and lost the entire crowd of about 500 people. And he did not care and made no effort to connect with the group. He could have been reciting Clinton's 1988 DNC speech, because no one in the entire crowd was listening after about 10 minutes. The feedback from the event was amazing, because almost everyone said that to make the event better they should GET A BETTER SPEAKER.

Conservative, Neo-con, I don't care what label you pin on Kristol. I think he's a moron who's overstayed his fifteen minutes of fame. Fox has no business giving him a bully pulpit to vent his spleen. He's no better than Dick Morris (and yes, Fox gives him too damn much time on the air, too).

Deterence works on a nation to nation basis. If we need to stop criminals police work should suffice. Terrorists can be destroyed by removing their causes and international support for their destruction.

"If you read through this article, you get a picture of Bill Kristol's behavior through the last few years, and it is obvious that as I have often pointed out, he chooses positions and personalities which are detrimental to the Republican party. He isn't a conservative at all.

"He is a mole."

Mole? Or opportunist?

It strikes me that, at every turn, Kristol has adapted or created his "ideas" and chosen his standard-bearer so as to attract the most attention for himself and his "ideas".

In this sense, Kristol isn't a mole. He's a parasite.

Buchanan has the nasty habit of calling everybody who doesn't agree with him a "neocon". This creates the misconception that neocons are legion. In turn, Kristol dubs all those at odds with him as "paleocons". Thus, the forces of the paleos are enormously magnified.

So we have two fringes -- one actually Populist, the other some kind of "Manifest Destiny", both irrelevant -- whose inner linings define the outer limits of conservatism.

Kristol is a red-diaper baby with a twist (his parents abandoned the left before he was in diapers!). Brooks --- much as I like the guy (great writer with a wicked and supersmart wit) --- is the son of two well respected and very liberal college professors. Neither guy is a conservative. Both have been too long marinated in an academic stew, and Strauss alone does not a conservative make. Brooks can barely find the gumption to challenge bleeding heart Mark Shields most of the time during their Friday segment on the PBS Newshour. And Kristol is, well, Kristol. He doesn't wear well --- much too whiny.

As for a Bull Moose party, it would be a disaster for the Republican Party, which is why it appeals to Benedict Arnold "War Hero" McCain. Two years out from the presidential election, it looks like Bush has the political skills to ward off any such eventuality, however.

I agree, Kristol wouldn't recognize a Ronald Reagan republican if he bumped into one. Kristol is a wimp and I do not support his idea of republicanism. If being a republican means acting like Kristol, I'll pass.

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